Category Archives: stash (busting)

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These yarns tend toward the finer side, though there are a few exceptions, and include cones of weaving yarn. Once again, the yarn’s intended purpose is between brackets.

4ply yarns

Left: Bendy Luxury (meant for a cardigan on the Passap, now… a blanket?)
The rest: various thinner or handspun yarns, including some sari silk, 4ply cashmere (scarf), laceweight and cobweb yarns (scarves), three kinds of metallic yarn (borders on shawls) and a merino cashmere I bought at Dimmeys a very long time ago.

Sock yarns. (Here’s the thing. I bought the Passap because, of all things I used to knit, I thought I’d miss having and giving handknit socks the most. Well, I had quite a stockpile already, that I didn’t dip into in three years. Since I’ve not touched the machine in nearly two years I’ve just bought other things for Paul and my Dad. And even with knitting most of them on the machine, there’s always a bit of handknitting involved. So now that my RSI is back I’m thinking I’ll weave all this instead.)

Left: A kilo of Knittery undyed sock yarn. (I never got around to dying this, but the yarn is lovely. It was top of my ‘possibly to sell’ list until I realised I could still dye it – only with a colour gamut project in mind instead.)
Middle and right: leftover sock yarn scraps (warp for yet more scarves).

All in all, I have quite a few scarves, a few shawls, a colour gamut blanket or shawl and some towels to make.

Overall… I have way too many scarves lined up. Either I make them to gift or donate, or come up with something else to make, or sell/gift the sock yarn. Though the sock yarn could be combined to make a larger project. I’ve been meaning to look into saori garments, made from uncut lengths of woven fabric. I’d love to make a jacket. Hmm. Perhaps I’ll explore that in another post.

I’ll start with the heavier yarns, though since I was photographing by boxful a few finer ones were included in project bundles. The yarn’s intended purpose and loom is between brackets.

Bulky yarns:

Top: frogged Inca on the left (woven scarf, knitters loom), leftover Vintage Hues on the right (woven scarves, knitters loom)
Bottom: frogged silk on the left (woven scarf, knitters loom), the rest are leftovers (cream ones might be mixed with the Inca)

Ms Gusset Cormo. I signed up for 1 1/2 kilo, and got RSI not long after it arrived. (Reports of it being hard to dye and not being a white garment kind of girl have had me stalled. A woven blanket seems the logical solution, though I might see how well the Bond Sweater Machine handles it.)

My poor stash. It’s been ignored lately, which is a pity because it’s a nice stash. Several bouts of culling have eliminated most of the so-so yarns, leaving plenty of nice ones. But the majority was bought for a purpose it won’t be put to, since I can’t knit or crochet it, so I’m considering what to do with it instead.

Back when I was able to knit I used to do a big photo of all of my stash every six months or so, label it in Photoshop and write a post about what I wanted to do with it. Doing this often inspired me, either by showing yarn combinations I hadn’t thought of, or reminding me of projects I really wanted to do. I haven’t done that in ages, so maybe it’s time I did again.

My stash has been stowed up in the top of the craft room wardrobe since we moved in, and barely been touched since.

A quarter of those boxes don’t contain knitting or weaving yarn. One of the small ones contains embroidery yarn, another perle cotton for inkle weaving, and a third has ‘craft yarn’ warp for rya rugs. One of the big boxes holds macrame jute and another has little leftover balls and labels from past projects.

Once upon a time these boxes were bursting with knitting yarn, and I had a couple of storage boxes of yarn hiding beneath the day bed, too. Of the knitting yarn that’s left maybe 20% is from frogged garments. How has it shrunk so much? Well, while there was a lag between giving up knitting and not buying yarn for it, eventually the urge to splurge did fade. Yarn was used or culled.

I might not be able to knit, but can still weave. I’ve photographed my stash again and initially wrote a rather long post. For ease of reading I’m dividing it into two posts, which will follow this one. Stay tuned…

Thanks to moving house, preparing the old for sale, lots of unpacking and DIY at the new one, and work, I’ve now got a big flare up of RSI in my hands. And week before the work deadline. Sigh.

I’d been so looking forward to getting past the deadline and finally having time for some craft. Now I’m resting my hands (I shouldn’t be typing this), dying of boredom and my main form of creativity right now seems to be trying cocktail recipes (only one a night, mind you, unless Paul wants one).

Yesterday I tidied up the craft room a little. Looking at some of the stuff in my refashion/repurpose piles, I came upon the leftover shade cards from my Yarn Shade Card Blanket. I got to wondering if I could turn them into pom poms. It seemed like it would be very quick and not too fiddly, so I gave it a go. Lo and behold, it worked.

Two things I found worth noting: cable yarns don’t form fluffy pom poms, and wool yarn doesn’t seem to be as good as cotton at staying in a tight knot.

Not only did I have leftovers, but new cards that had become obsolete (or contain mohair, so I won’t be buying the yarn) since I made the blanket. Plenty to choose from:

I cut away all the paper except a narrow strip where the yarn was attached:

Then I rolled it up:

Into a nice little coil:

I tied it twice, flipping it over for the second knot, as tight as I could manage:

Then I pushed the string to the centre and trimmed off the paper strip:

A gave it a haircut to even up the strands:

Success!

But the mix of colours on a Bendigo Woollen Mills sample card tend to divide into pastels and darker colours, which don’t always go together well. I decided to try cutting up the cards and combining similar sets of colours:

And that worked, too!

Which is great, because some of the sample cards are of novelty yarns that aren’t going to make good pom poms. I can combine them with other yarns…

… when my hands recover. Even this small, fast project left me sore. I can see a long, boring, craftless summer ahead.

To recap: I had knit a long striped band out of some gift yarn and decided to make it the sleeve-yoke section of a jacket inspired by Jo Sharp’s Origami Bolero pattern. Though the Bendigo Luxury yarn (shade ‘bark’) I ordered to make the rest of the jacket arrived in a few days, by then I’d become thoroughly distracted by other machine knitting projects. It did benefit from a bit of time out, though. When I came to knit the body and collar/waistband I had a better idea of what I wanted to do.

First I knit the body on the Bond and blocked it to size. I had planned to make the collar/waistband piece out of some natural Bendigo yarn I already had, but by calculating the weight and number of stitches of the body piece I worked out that I didn’t have enough. There was almost enough left of the ‘bark’ coloured yarn, however, and I liked the idea of continuing with that shade. Having the rest of the garment in one solid colour would make the sleeves the feature. And a white band around the waist was only going to make that bit of me look bigger.

Trouble was, the Bond wasn’t wide enough (then) to knit the waistband, so I’d have to do it sideways, in a strip. That would make it very hard to get the size exactly right and use up all of the yarn. So I decided I’d just have to hand knit it, veeery slooowly. That’s why one of the first projects I started on the Bond is the last to be completed.

The Jo Sharp pattern is for a garment that can be worn both ways. Now that it’s done I’m not sure what I like better – the ribbed part at the waist or as a collar. Hmm. What do you think?

A couple of years ago I swapped a pattern with another Raveller. The pattern I received in return was Summer Solstice. I tried knitting it by hand, but abandoned the project because the yarn was too scratchy.

At the beginning of last year I tried simplifying it for the Bond. I knit it about five times before giving up due to tension problems, which eventually I worked out was because cable spun cotton was just too much resistant and inflexible for the machine. (It completely destroyed the foam bar and its replacement.)

During the Crazy Hot Weekend I was determined to use up a particular yarn in the stash – some Cleckheaton Country 8ply that I’d dyed with eucalyptus leaves, then over-dyed later with blue because I don’t really wear yellow. I figured I’d try Summer Solstice again.

I had to draw out the pattern pieces and note the numbers of stitches and rows, then convert them to the gauge of the tension swatch. It was worth the trouble because it all came together beautifully.

One of the problems I’d had before was losing track of where I was in the pattern. This time I had a counter on the machine to help me keep track. I’d also found rehanging the weighted hem laborious and annoying. So I did the yoke-sleeve piece in three sections, grafting them together later.

The yarn had quite a bit of colour variation in it, some greener, some bluer, and a less varied greenish-blue. Instead of trying to blend it all together, I did each section in one hue. I figured if I didn’t like it I could over-dye again, but I love how it has come out. And analogous colour schemes seem to be coming into fashion.

Of all the garments I started or made over the Crazy Hot Weekend so far I like this one the best. But there is another one to finish, so I’ll reserve judgement until it’s done.

Last weekend Paul went away to one of his car club racing events, leaving me at home during four days of the Melbourne heatwave. I spent my time that Crazy Hot Weekend working and knitting on the Bond.

I had a plan: knit up a bunch of yarn from my stash that had been sitting unused because it was too thick for the Passap. Start simple and take on more complicated shapes as I grew more confident and familiar with the machine.

So I gathered together all the garment construction ideas and patterns I had that contained basic geometric shapes. The first one I tackled was a basic rectangle with two slits for armholes, worn as a vest. It was supposed to drape nicely at the front so I needed a thinner yarn knit at a loose tension.

The yarn I chose was a handspun (made by Dianne Sullivan according to the label) that I’d bought at the Christchurch Handweavers and Spinners Guild shop in 2009. About a 5ply (sport) weight, it was too thick for the Passap and too thin for the Bond – but knit on the latter would produce an open fabric with drape.

It took two goes to get the rectangle the right proportions. Fortunately, frogging and reknitting is quick and easy with a knitting machine and a ball winder, so I didn’t mind starting again. The second try came out the right size.

A simple black border of black sock yarn around the outside and armholes neatened the edges.

I put the armholes a bit too far apart, so the back drapes a little. But I don’t mind how it looks.

I prefer it wrapped and pinned with a shawl pin than hanging loose. It’s not as soft at the Cowly Vest, but I love the colour and it’ll be a nice throw-on extra layer.

Once I’d washed the vest pieces knit on the Bond I pinned them together and put them on my duct tape dress model:

I’d taken stitch gauge measurements from the original garment pieces, but I don’t think I’d blocked those. The yarn relaxed quite a bit so the pieces were now longer and narrower. This made the vest too long, so I unravelled around 30 rows from the bottom. The sides at the hips needed to be wider, so I tried a technique on the machine of attaching pieces to the sides of a new section as you knit. I’ve been a bit sick lately, so it took a few attempts before I could get my head around it, but I’m really happy with the result:

I sewed up the shoulders, but when I tried the vest on I didn’t like the way they sat, so I replicated the side treatment, but this time knit separate wedges and sewed them on because it was much harder to attach a piece at 90 degrees, rows to stitches:

Then it was a matter of modelling when it wasn’t unbearably hot:

I love it. It’s so soft and light, yet being mostly alpaca it’s sure to be warm.

It’s odd how bagging up a kilo of yarn from the stash and giving it to the op shop can make me feel better. I spent some time yesterday going through the stash and deciding which weaving project to start next. Then last night, as I was waiting to fall asleep, I realised I’d selected a yarn I wasn’t in love with and paired it with another that wasn’t a great match, all for the sake of just using it all up and reducing the stash total.

And I decided that was just plain silly. Since getting RSI I’ve started to see my time as the greater commodity. Why spend it on anything less than a yarn I love and a finished object I want? The only reason I can think of is to try a method I haven’t tried before, but it doesn’t need to be while making something I don’t like or need.

But I let myself take one yarn back out of the bag. It eases that nagging feeling I’ll regret the cull.

Top down, short row heel and toes. Finished over a few nights by kitchinering the top edge of the toe to the foot and hand knitting the cuff. The yarn is Regia Royal Colour and black Patonyle.

I recently finished the knitwear alterations I’d started pre-RSI and when I was done with these socks I missed my little half hour handknitting fix each evening. So I intended to whip up another pair of socks for myself the next weekend so I had cuffs to knit this week.

Except by the time I got to the weekend I’d had a very heavy period for thirteen days and was too exhausted to concentrate. After botching one sock I frogged it and despaired. Then the next day it occurred to me that I could just churn out tubes now and add toes, heels and cuffs later. So I started on the sock yarn leftovers I’d matched up last year:

The knitting machine colour changer is fantastic, and makes knitting stripes so easy. Seeing how the colour combine and watching the rows grow is dangerously addictive. I may be in danger of building up my arm and shoulder muscles.

It has me wondering how well scrappy socks would go on the machine. I couldn’t do small stripes, as stopping to thread new yarn would get tedius. But if I did bigger stripes it might be a fun way to use up smaller amounts of leftovers.